About 100 people gathered in the Erickson Hall Kiva on Monday night to hear civil rights activist and mathematics educator Robert Moses speak about the necessity of providing quality education for all students - especially in math.
The Center for the Scholarship of Teaching and the Division of Mathematics and Science Education sponsored the event.
"Why does the country have 300 high schools that fail to graduate more than 50 percent of entering students, mostly black and Latino?" asked Moses. "We would not allow that in any middle-class neighborhoods."
Moses said policymakers allow schools to remain low quality and then "rescue some of the students" through methods such as affirmative action and magnet schools. The rest of the students are left unprepared.
"The country runs sharecropper education," he said, labeling the type of education he said was given to freed slaves.
In the 1970s, Moses developed the Algebra Project for students he felt were underprepared in math. The project is a national effort to provide rural and inner-city students with adequate math skills by building a local network of students, parents, teachers, administrators and community members. The project reaches approximately 100,000 students per year in 10 states, with a particular focus on the Southern United States.
"In the '60s, literacy was a gatekeeper for whether or not people could vote," said Jodie Galosy, research associate for the center. "The same things exists in this technological world in terms of math."
Moses was invited to speak for the center's 2004 Amarel Memorial Lecture. Galosy said the center invites "teachers whose work really focuses on teachers and classroom learning in ways that are powerful and that connect with students."
Joseph Featherstone, a teacher education professor, said Moses' method of education prepares students for higher education. He called Moses' book, "Radical Equations," "both a curriculum and a social movement."
"The most urgent issues facing people of color are issues of educational access," he said. "The vision here is all students need a quality, rounded education."
